2007 Chevy Cobalt issue with power steering, brakes, and gas pedal?!

Maintenance/Repairs
, , , ,
1

My wife was about to pull off of our hill (facing uphill) to go to work. She said she stopped, held on the brake, and looked back and forth. She then went to press the gas and the pedal wouldn’t respond (no rev either) but the engine WAS on. The car started drifting backward and she said that both the steering and the brakes were very difficult to control (power and brake assist had disappeared). She was able to guide it back into the driveway and get it parked. She said that when she got it parked, she turned it off and started it up again. She tried the gas and it worked and she tried the steering and brakes and both worked. She stayed home today while we try to figure out what’s going on with it for fear that it will happen again.

I initially thought some sort of power loss but she said that the radio stayed on. There were no dash warning lights or sounds indicated to her and she said that there were no unusual sounds from the car during this whole thing.

Dealer says that it would be $90 just to look at it and I’m sure it’d be an arm and a leg for any repairs but I’m not sure that my normal repair shop is qualified to handle something like this. Any thoughts?

2

This very well could be the ignition switch recall. Switch goes into ACC by itself. Consider yourself lucky and don’t drive it until you get the GM warranty repair.

3

I second knfenimore for the ignition switch. My 2010 Cobalt is so quiet it’s hard to tell if the engine is running or not. By any chance are there a bunch of extra keys on the key ring. The extra weight will increase the likelihood of an ignition switch failure.

Ed B.

4

There weren’t extra keys we just got a letter from GM asking us to remove them. I thought that it may be related to that as well but she says that everything was still running. I’m with you, though, I still suspect that it is related to that. Even if it was in between the 2 settings or something and glitched over to accessory mode, maybe? It’s odd though. Especially the timing. We got that recall letter not 3 days ago and now it does this…

5

Perhaps, like you said Ed, she just thought the engine was still running because it was quiet. It is a pretty quiet car!